Ms Akchousanh Rasphone

Research Students

My interest in the natural world began as a child exploring the bountiful open spaces around my home in Savannakhet, Laos. Following completion of secondary school, I received an AUSAID scholarship and left Laos in 2002 to pursue a BA in Geographic Information Systems from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.I then worked from 2005-2007 as a GIS specialist for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Laos. In 2010, I returned to Australia and received an MA in Geographical Sciences from the Australian National University. I then returned to WCS in Laos, but as a special landscape ecologist and biodiversity management project coordinator. My passion for wildlife conservation and wildlife studies steadily grew during my time with WCS.

My journey with WildCRU began in 2012 as a postgraduate student in the Recanati-Kaplan Centre Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice. It was a unique and invaluable opportunity that enhanced my competency to work in the wildlife research field and to become a conservation biologist. After the program I undertook a study of clouded leopards Neofelis nebulosa in Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area (NEPL NPA), Laos, with the support of a Post-Panther Scholarship from WildCRU. This was part of a wider project on clouded leopards and their associated guild species, in particular, their links with carbon conservation and, more generally, forest conservation. The study also led to the development of my DPhil research where my primary interest is the intraguild interactions of large carnivores and their impacts on their prey and other smaller carnivores in the NEPL NPA. While I am enjoying my time among the spires and towers of Oxford I am also keen to get back to the jungles and mountains of my study site in Laos – especially to catch a glimpse of those cute little marbled cats!